How GeekSpeak started their web page design journey

Summary

We are looking for an original visual design (layered PSD only – NO CODE REQUIRED) for a motorcycle website. We would like a sharp and clean design suitable for use in a CMS driven site - i.e. the content areas need to be well defined as users will be given access to edit each block of content separately.

We need designers for ongoing work: We will be creating another group of websites over the next 2 months and will need at least 8 more designs including a health store, a fishing charter, and a home sellers site to start off with. We would like to find designers we can work with on a regular basis so we will be keeping details of the designers we like the best from this contest even if they are not selected as the winner this time.

The purpose of this website is to help people find our motorcycle shop and see what bikes we sell and what services we provide. We not only sell new road bikes, motorcross bikes, and farm quad bikes (Kawasaki and Suzuki brands mainly), we sell secondhand bikes, provide bike maintenance services for all brands and run weekend rides and bike adventures as well. We also sell accessories, trailers, tyres, clothing, oils, and parts.

We need to apply your design to a homepage, a photo gallery page (allowing a description of each image), and a page with a single content pane as well.

We are a small town business in New Zealand and we go the extra mile for our customers.

Company name

Warkworth Motorcycles

What inspires you and how do you envision the design for your business?

We do not have a logo or style guide as such. Here’s the site we’re revamping – don’t be fooled by it’s simplicity – we are looking to VASTLY improve it. http://www.warkworthmotorcycles.co.nz/

Key message to deliver is "We go the extra mile".

Include tagline “Kawasaki and Suzuki Specialists” somewhere in the header

Please include the Warkwoth Motorcycles logo in header but it should not be over bearing. The logo is available on the old site but could use some tidying as it is quite badly pixelated. If you can make it smoother we would be eternally grateful.

Please do not use images from the old site, we want a fresh look. All the blurbs about the bikes are going to be rewritten to be shorter but feel free to use bits of them to show where text is placed in your design.

Colour theme would be best to include the Kawasaki Red and Suzuki Blue to help reflect the brands we focus on. We would also like the logos of these two brands included somewhere on the homepage as we will be linking to their sites.

Although we would like some wow-factor in the visual feel of the site we do not want to stray from accepted website practices for placement of things like navigation.
- Navigation should therefore be horizontal top or vertical left hand side or a combination of those two.
- Links should be easily identifiable from standard text
- Headings should not look like links or include icons (such as arrows) that would make people think it might be a link
- There should be some way of knowing what page you are on in the menu (i.e. which menu item you have selected)
- There should be a followed link colour
- Font should be one of Verdana, Tahoma or Arial
- Must fit a screen width of 1024 x 768 pixels

Stock Photos:
We recommend that all contestants use iStockPhoto or a similar service for the site images. We will pay for the winning contestants stock images. Please bookmark or save the image numbers so we can easily locate them and pay for a license.

Because this site is a New Zealand business it would be an advantage to capture the feel of NZ in the imagery used - although this is NOT A REQUIREMENT. For examples of NZ images with bikes see http://www.naturespic.com/NewZealan…W22=Search

Homepage should contain:
- Obvious links to the 5 types of bikes we sell (Farm bikes, Fun bikes, Dirt bikes, Road bikes, Secondhand bikes).
- Include a content block for a ‘featured bike’ or “what’s new in store”
- A sign up form for our newsletter titled "WWMC Insiders" with... Join our newsletter and you get discounts, specials, event info., bike tips and news - with subscribe button

Navigation should include Home | About Us | Servicing | New and Used Bikes | Accessories | Events | Contact Us

Photo gallery page should allow for the following information about each image: Make, Model, Year, CC rating, hours, KMs, and about a paragraph of information relating to each image. Also a 'contact us for more info' email link.

Single content pane page (standard webpage) should be as stated, just a page with a single content block, and include examples of 2 levels of heading style, bullets and a horizontal line.

Buttons:
If you are including buttons in your design please show a normal, hover and active state for them.

Wants

- A fun and masculine style. Keep in mind both the road bike and farm king quad aspect of our business and give the site a sense of adventure (rekindling your youth, hitting the road) and also farming. It should make you want to get on a bike and head off for a ride.
- Keep it simple. We don’t want clutter. We don’t want ‘fancy’.
- Crisp, sharp high resolution unpixilated imagery

Don't want

- The site should not feel like you have to be rich to shop at Warkworth motors - this is not a Rolls Royce business. It should make the visitor feel like the store will have the right bike for them, irrespective of budget.